Page 40 of Her Name in Red
He takes an enormous bite, a drop of sauce catching at the corner of his mouth. I watch as he licks it away, then quickly avert my eyes when he catches me looking.
“You're turning into one of those girls who wears a jersey to bed,” he teases, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
The mental image of me in nothing but Riggs' oversized jersey hits us both at the same time. His chewing slows. My heartbeat doesn't.
“In your dreams,” I mutter, but it comes out weaker than I intended.
Riggs recovers first, clearing his throat. “So what were you doing while deliberately not watching my game?”
I gesture vaguely around the disaster zone of my apartment. “Living my best life, obviously.”
We lapse into silence after that, nothing but the drone of the TV filling the space between us. Some crime show rerun with actors who are too pretty to be real detectives, their guns never getting jammed, their vests never smelling like stale sweat. I could tell them a thing or two about what real blood looks like under different lighting conditions. How it dries brown, not red. How it flakes under your fingernails for days.
Riggs polishes off his sandwich in about four bites, like he's afraid someone might take it from him. Hockey players and their metabolisms. He crumples the wrapper and tosses it into the bag with surprising accuracy for someone who's probably running on fumes after playing a full game.
“Showoff,” I mutter, and he grins, all teeth and boyish charm.
“You love it,” he says, wiping his hands on his sweatpants like the animal he is.
I don't dignify that with a response, just stretch my legs out along the couch until my feet are practically in his lap. It's a small couch, I tell myself. Where else am I supposed to put them?
Without comment—without even breaking his focus on whatever bullshit is happening on the TV—Riggs lifts my feet and places them firmly on his thighs. His hands wrap around my left ankle, thumb pressing into the arch in a way that makes my breath catch.
I should pull away. Should make some cutting remark about personal space or how I'm not a pet that needs petting. But then his thumb digs into a knot I didn't even know was there, and holy fuck, the sensation shoots straight up my leg like an electric current.
Riggs doesn't look at me, just keeps his eyes on the TV. “Your ankles were twitching. You always bounce your feet when you're tense.”
I hadn't realized he'd noticed that about me. I hadn't even realized I was doing it at all.
“I'm not tense,” I lie, even as he finds another pressure point that makes me want to melt into a puddle of goo.
“Sure you're not,” he says, his voice soft, almost gentle. His thumbs trace slow, deliberate circles around my ankle bones, dipping occasionally to press into the arch of my foot.
I pretend to watch it, but all my senses are focused on the points where Riggs' skin meets mine. The calluses on his palms. The surprising gentleness of his touch. The circles he's drawing, wider now, moving up to my calf muscle.
I sink deeper into the couch cushions, letting my body go slack under his touch. His hands are so large they wrap almost completely around my calf, thumbs pressing into muscle while his fingers curl against the back of my leg. The contrast of his skin against mine—his tanned and marked with tiny scars from hockey, mine pale and smooth—is weirdly fascinating.
Ten minutes later, the circles stop. The pressure of his thumbs against my skin fades, replaced by the dead weight of his hands just resting on my legs. I glance over, ready with some smartass comment about his stamina, and that's when I see it.
Riggs Rhodes, hockey star and self-appointed disruptor of my solitude, is completely fucking passed out.
His head has tipped back against the couch, exposing the tanned column of his throat. His mouth is slightly open, lips parted just enough that I can hear the soft, rhythmic sound of his breathing. Not quite a snore, but close. His chest rises and falls in that deep, unguarded way that only happens when someone is truly out.
I should wake him up and tell him to go home.
His face is different in sleep. Younger, somehow. The perpetual tension in his jaw is gone, that cocky half-smile wiped clean. There's a vulnerability to him like this that I never see when he's awake. The shadow of stubble is already forming along his jaw, even though I know he shaved this morning.
His eyelashes are ridiculous—long and dark against his cheekbones. The kind of eyelashes girls pay money to fake. One of his eyes is slightly swollen from whatever happened during the game.
He’s so fucking pretty, and he should not be here with me.
Chapter 15
Maren
I've been watching him sleep for the better part of an hour, switching between his unconscious face and whatever mindless show marathon is playing on TV. The blue light flickers across his features, highlighting then shadowing the curve of his cheekbone, the slope of his nose. I'm fascinated by the tiny movements of his eyes beneath their lids. What the fuck does Riggs Rhodes dream about?
He shifted once, about twenty minutes ago, his body sliding deeper into the couch cushions, his hand tightening briefly around my ankle before going slack again. I should move my legs. Should get up and do literally anything else. But there's something weirdly comforting about the weight of his hands on my skin, even in sleep.
